The single Chilean production in this collection, even if directed by an established noir master from neighboring Argentina, Carlos Hugo Christensen’s La dama de la muerte (US: The Lady of Death) transports Spanish speakers from the Southern Cone to a studio-bound Victorian London immured in clouds of fog. Based on a short story trilogy by Englishman Robert Louis Stevenson, whose work also gave us Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945), the film stars Carlos Cores as Roberto Braun, a young wastrel of fine breeding whose attempt to jump off a bridge is interrupted by a passerby who offers him a more interesting way to off himself: joining the Suicide Club, whose members are randomly selected for annihilation at monthly meetings, after which another member will do the killing at an unspecified date and time, making it look like an accident. Roberto’s name is selected early on, of course, and the rest of the film depicts his fear, regret, and confusion as he awaits his fate. Judith Sulian plays Ofelia, the beautiful “lady of death” whose arrival is bittersweet to say the least. The primary appeal of La dama de la muerte is the visual richness created by Christensen, cinematographer Traverso, and the production designers who painted with a Gothic darkening brush to create the gloomiest of atmospheres where death is quite literally closing in and every stranger on the street seems to be wearing a black cape. The interiors too are visually arresting, the baroque opulence at times overwhelming, especially when coupled with the often-over-the-top score: note the fireplace-lit, candelabra-dripping meeting place where Suicide Club members in ascots enjoy live music before determining who will perish next.